Saturday Matinee

I found myself in a comfortable and familiar arena yesterday when I sat front row center at South Coast Repertory’s production of a Sondheim piece, “A Little Night Music”. I ran to the theater, made it to the box office three minutes before production, and with my luck, someone had turned in a front row center seat last minute due to illness. Great for me!

The theater for South Coast Repertory productions is so perfect, so intimate! I loved this theater. Reminded me of the La Jolla Playhouse a little bit. This production is so light and frothy, but with the dark undertone about the reality of relationships (typical Sondheim!). Sorta like watching a delightful production of Cosi van Tutti mixed with Company. I am always amazed by Sondheim’s talent in portraying human relationships and ridiculous love predicaments, and this definitely did not disappoint. The aging husband marries an 18 year old, but is in love with his old flame, an aging actress. The husband’s young son is in love with his stepmom. The aging actress has many lovers, including a married man, whose wife accepts because she simply loves her husband. The two servants get it on somewhere in the stable. It’s all very complicated and fun, especially when they all find themselves in the countryside one weekend. Duels, death, adultery, trickery..it’s all there.

I didn’t know anything about this piece and opened my program. To my surprise, Mark Jacoby (from Broadway’s “Sweet Charity” as Vittorio and “Sweeney Todd” as Judge Turpin) stars in this wonderful charming production as the lawyer Frederik Egerman. Very similar to his role in Sweeney on Broadway, he plays someone who works in a courthouse and loves very young women. Poor guy, I hope he doesn’t get typecast as a pedophile. He does wonderfully as the droll, helpless aging man who tries to recapture his youth by marrying someone very young, although he realizes that you can’t rewind time.

Other notable performers were Stephanie Zimbalist, as the aging actress with many lovers, singing the musical’s most famous song “Send in the Clowns” with simplicity and sadness. I liked how she sang it in a way (no belting) because even though people love that song, she sang it as it should have been, slightly quiet and dejected. Misty Cotton and Damon Kirsche had amazing singing voices, and Amanda Noughton stole the show with her dry humor and impeccable timing, all underlining a simple desire for her husband to love her utmost and only.

Each person in this complicated tryst contemplates death (who doesn’t want to die in the face of unrequited/complicated love?) as an option … but in the end, everyone seems to choose ‘being alive’, because, love is everything!

A great deal seems to be going on in this house tonight. . . . Will you tell me what it’s all for? Having outlived my own illusions by centuries, it would be soothing at least to pretend to share some of yours.

Well, I think it must be worth it.

Why?

It’s all there is, isn’t it?